PUBG developers comments on the latest patch

And some commentaries from PlayerUnknown himself

Just a day after the latest patch release the developers already have to shed light on the recent changes

Hello everyone. My name is Andro Dars, I’m the Community Manager for PUBG and I wanted to offer clarifications regarding some of your concerns expressed here.

The reason we changed the wording of the FAQ entry described in the OP, is because we think the new wording does a better job at letting you know what we expect from you and helps you know what to expect from us.

We are not out to ban you, or your friends. This is not our job. We don’t like banning our players and only use it as a last resort. The job of the PUBG Community Team is to make sure that the largest possible amount of our players are enjoying themselves, respecting other players and playing fair.

Fair play is crucial when it comes to how we look at players editing the game files. Gaining any kind of unfair advantage in PUBG is against our Rules of Conduct.

We want you to know that we constantly evaluate and review our policies to keep up with our rapidly growing game and provide the best experience for our users. Having said that, this far, the only group of people who have been banned for changing game files are those who have removed textures from the game. I sincerely hope that you all agree that removing grass, trees, buildings, etc. from the game is cheating. Cheaters get a permanent ban in our game. It is extremely rare for someone to get a permanent ban if they are not cheating. Their transgressions would have to be quite extraordinary. Those who have received a permanent ban for non-cheating offences are very few and very, VERY, far between.

While we’re on the subject, I want to reiterate that, contrary to what you may have heard online, we’ve never banned anyone for honking a horn, using Reshade, or any other strange reason. I know a lot of you are concerned about our policy of banning stream snipers and I want to reassure you that we don’t take this policy lightly. We simply don’t ban anyone for anything without conclusive evidence. This very much applies to stream sniping.

We’re always trying to find the best solutions for creating a fair environment for everyone. Our job is to uphold fun, respect for others and fair play. Please keep this in mind next time you hear that someone got banned for sneezing while playing PUBG or wearing tube socks with flip flops.

Maybe just to sweeten the pill PlayerUnknown held an AMA session with the reddit users, here is the short summary of the most interesting moments

GENERAL

What things would you personally like to see added into the game? even your most insane ideas!

I would love to add a single player campaign to the game. I think the island we have could be a great location for an interesting story, but unfortunatly we just don't have the time or the resources for this at the moment!

Any plans to incorporate text chat, specifically for deaf gamers? I'm not deaf but one of my friends is, and he has to use the steam overlay which is awkward. Team-only text chat would be nice. Thanks, love your game and appreciate the hard work from your team.

No plans for text chat right now, but we may consider it in the future if there is sufficient demand.

There have been some conflicting responses from community managers, where one manager has said one thing that is exact opposite of the other, regarding ADS settings and some other situations. Are there any plans to resolve this communication issue within the staff team?

Yes of course! We are still quite a new team, and we are still planning best practises etc.

Why are banned players / streamers allowed to play the game with new accounts?

Right now our policy is not to ban via IP/HWID. This may change going forward.

GAMEPLAY

What do you think about replacing the red zones with gas zones that gradually drains your life thus forcing players out of the zone (and make gas masks useful)?

Not a bad idea, but right now we want to focus on getting the current system polished and complete!

When will you remove the useless red zones

Redzones provide audio cover as well as a nice backdrop of explosions. I don't see the need to remove them!

Regarding the blue/electric field what about making it harder to see when in it and making it slower but deal more damage (right now there is no disadvantages to camping it)?

We just finished a meeting internally where we discussed changes to the Blue Zone system to make it fairer. We hope to start testing changes soon, but we have no ETA on when that might be just yet.

I personally think that the biggest problem with the game right now is the blue moving too quickly for later circles which discourages rather than encourages fights. Will we see any updates to blue mechanics? (maybe test out a few variations on the test servers)

We have been discussing the Blue Zone mechainics internally over the past few weeks and hope to start testing changes soon. No ETA as to when this might happen, but we are aware of your feedback in this regard.

What is the plan regarding bullet penetration? You said it's been talked about and I think it's a pretty big issue that's effecting game play in a big way. Shooting out buildings currently puts you at a MASSIVE disadvantage because of the indestructable wood beams. Same goes for chainlink fences. Why not just make these penetrable (even at 100% dmg as a quickfix)?

The gunplay team has started work on penetration systems and while I don't have specific information on this just yet, we will reveal more about the system over the coming months.

Same goes for water. What are your current ideas for how to "fix" the water as to not making players immortal when below? I saw you partnered with a studio with great water psysics at Microsoft, will you adopt their technology?

The gunplay team has started work on penetration systems and while I don't have specific information on this just yet, we will reveal more about the system over the coming months.

Why did you force post-processing and shadows and will we be able to toggle it off again? Even on my 1080Ti/7700k I can feel how big of a strain this puts on the game. Not to mention it looks pretty terrible with all the blurring.

We implemented a new shadow system that costs very little in terms of performance which is why it is now forced. The main issue is that our game is still somewhat CPU limited, and this effects higher spec systems more than low spec ones. We still have much work to do when it comes to optimisation, but as I said, we are commited to this task, even if it takes us some time to complete. And regarding PP, please remember that nothing we add is final, and we are using the Early Access period to test and get feedback on anything we add to the game.

Do you have any plans to integrate ReShade-like options to increase vibrance/saturation in the game? A lot of people, including myself, enjoy using ReShade as it makes the game much more colorful and vibrant (not to mention sharper!) so why not add an (optional) toggle for these features?

I'll discuss this with the Art Director and see if it is possible.

Why did you remove the jump-crouch keybind before introducing vaulting? The way I see it, that's just a major inconvenience for players and the double keybind "feature" had a lot of other useful uses - since a lot of actions are only available in certain situations (in car, under water, on foot, etc.)

We didn't remove the action itself. You can still jump-crouch, but now it requires a mechanical skill rather than a simple keybind. In our opinion, having a keybind for this action gave players who were aware of it a distinct advantage over those that did not.

Do you have a goal/plans in mind for a map pool long term? So say in 3 years time, where would you like it to be? If you plan to focus on esports, then games like CS have an 'active' pool of 7 maps, and rotate others in over time to keep things fresh and updated. The size of the maps of course is a big factor in that, and for how many you realistically wish to create, add and maintain. I think it would be amazing to have 5 maps, with 3 of them in active competitive rotation while the other two are on the sidelines being reworked to keep the game fresh, but I'd love to know what your thoughts on that are :)

We have plans for more maps for sure. We have the new desert map in production and an Adriatic themed map is also planned. Right now we have no other maps planned, but that's not to say we won't create more in the future!

Why the deafening silence on this extremely loud issue? Can you please take some action against this issue sooner? Or give us the options to manually lower this by preference. Or any solution your team can think of, I'll take anything, because I'm hardly playing this game any more, since I appear to be extra sensitive to noise or something.

We are currently rebalancing the audio levels and hope to push these to live servers soon. It is not just as simple as turning down certain sounds as we have to ensure all sounds are balanced. We have heard your feedback loud and clear and changes are coming!

Night scenario (Weather), will there be some kind of dark map similar to the foggy map that was introduced recently?

I have seen a prototype nighttime setting internally and I think you'll all be surprised at how good it looks. No ETA on when this may get added to the game yet tho, as it will take a lot of work to finish.

Have you considered the addition of some kind of gas grenade. This opens for those awesome gas masks to be of value.

Yes we have, but I have no more info on when or if this will be added.

I DEFINITELY think this game needs a couple bicycles lying around here and there. Gasless, one-man machines that'll help you get places when the blue is ticking.

We have the technology (motorbike) so it is definitely possible!

Are new vehicles going to be added?

Yes! We are currently working on 3 new vehicles internally.

Erangel is very obviously Russia, but I've seen hints that the new map is Nevada-ish... it would be a lot of work, but is there any interest in themed vehicle/item spawns, for the new map? Or will we still be looking at more Dacias and UAZ trucks?

We have new vehicles planned for the new map! As to what they are, you'll just have to wait and see!

Why am I so short in FPP? The camera is put at about the same height as door knobs, severely limiting your field of view and forcing more passive playstyles due to the visual info that this removes. It rewards sitting prone in grass by making the character equal height with grass, making it optimal to lie down and force people to run into you as opposed to being more active.

Simply raising the camera in FPP would have profound positive effects on the game and I'm wondering if that's something you guys would be open to. We can't raise the camera height further using the current character system, but we do have major plans to improve the FPP experience. This is not an easy task, and may take many months to implement but it is one aspect of the game we want to improve!

With the remove of the crouch jump and still lack of vaulting, could we use keyboard macros (for ex. I can set those in my Razer app)?

The crouch-jump is still in the game, but you will just need to use mechanical skill rather than a keybind to action it.

Will we see in the future weapons chambered in different calibers other than the existing ones?

We have no plans right now to add more calibers as we want to balance the current set first. Moving forward this may change, but right now we are not considering it.

Can we look forward to updating vehicle physics? (some of them are pretty uncontrollable...looking at you 3 seat motorcycle)

Vehicle physics are still very much a WIP, so yes you can expect improvements!

Has the team ever thought of adding more "mini" objectives. the care packs are a nice one, but another random occurrence that can be risky but good enough to attempt for would be nice to spice the game up a bit. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but most of the time it's just land, loot, get to the last circle, kill everyone, and even though that's hella fun and its practically the point of Battle Royale, it'd be fun to have some random variation to the formula occur.

To be honest, no. Right now we just want to focus on polishing the mode we have. That's not to say we won't consider something like this in the future, but we're pretty happy with the way the game-mode works now.

Would you consider adding a division/placement system just like LoL , CS:GO or more like H1Z1 after release ? Its satisfying seeing urself climb up like this rather than having to check leaderboards.Also it gives u a goal which leaderboards dont cuz not everybody can be ranked 1.

We do have plans to add systems like this. We also want to add a character leveling system & weapon skill systems (that doesn't effect game-play) and other progression systems. We'll have more info on these once we get a chance to fully plan them out!

Would you consider the ability to sit in not-functioning cars, for example to hide in or have some sort of bunker?

That's not a bad idea and I'll pass it onto the team! Thanks!.

Why is the sound mix so loud when you load onto the spawn island? Why is the sound so loud once you are in the airplane? Will there be a way to get into the game without people shooting a shotgun right next to your ear while screaming profanities?

We are working on rebalancing audio levels at the moment. We also will improve the way players spawn in so you don't have bleeding ears by the time you get onto the plane, but we just have more important issues to focus on right now. For now, you can use CTRL+M to mute the game audio.

The increasing amount of scripters and hackers? Major cheating sites have published public hacks and private hacks become more common each day!

I can tell you with certainty that all of the public cheats are detected. Those that claim otherwise are more than likely scam sites. We are also building systems that will catch even the ones that bypass any clientside anti-cheat solutions. It's an ongoing battle, but we know how important it is to provide a fair playing field for all players, and are working hard to get the game to that state!

Improving the gunplay? Recoil is too random, it should have some kind of pattern with a small amount of spread for each shot (like CS:GO does it). Going full-auto on an enemy is more a thing of luck than skill right now.

The current recoil system is designed to reward those with quicker reaction times. We don't want to go down the road of recoil patterns as these can be easily beaten with mouse macros.

Can you see to it that every suspicious human silhouette shaped bush is removed? It's driving me mad.

Sorry, but it looks like it's the madhouse for you...

Will the viewmodel and crosshair be more customizable in the future ?

Not sure about the viewmodel, but we do want to allow players to customise the crosshair in the future.

Forcing DoF or any other kind of blur without an option to disable it is just unacceptable in PC gaming.

Changes to the visual elements of the game are never final. We will always consider player feedback when it comes to changes we have made.

Are destructible environments in the game's future?

Probably not in the immediate future, but maybe someday! I would like to add more destruction, but it is very expensive on server performance so we have to be careful how much we add!

GAME/SERVER PERFORMANCE

Can you shed some light on what you intend to do, going forward, about the optimizations on this game and especially the server performance? I'm talking about 10hz servers, massive desync and crazy frame drops even on high-end computers.

We'll discuss this further in a dev blog post in the future. We are always aiming to improve performance across both client and server, but this takes time. This is a marathon for us, not a sprint, and even when we move to full release, we won't just stop development. We have a plan to continue to improve the game over the coming months, and years!

South African servers. Is this something the team is looking into in the near future? I'm sure 1000s of players are waiting for this.

We are working to open servers in more regions but we don't have an ETA on when this will happen just yet.

How do you spin up servers for that region if AWS is not available in that region? ps I live in South Africa

By working with other partners in those regions!

Restricting players to servers they got a low ping to AKA the game matches the server to the players?

We are working to open more servers in new regions so this should become less of an issue in the future.

Fixing bugs that hamper custom matches? Players sometimes get shuffled into different teams. Some players are kicked by the server so they cannot even compete in the custom matches., as an example.

Like the rest of the game, custom matches are still under development and will improve going forward.

Enabling custom servers for everyone?

I have no new info on this just yet.

At this development stage, when is it scheduled to be fully released? With the progress made so far, much has been improved, but at the same time, there are still very many issues. At what point would you consider the game out of beta and in "initial release?"

We are still on track to have the game out this year. We will be announcing more about our launch plans in the future, but I would ask you to remember that launch doesn't mean we will stop development. We are building this as a service, rather and just a game so if there are still issues with the game after launch, we will get them resolved!

What tick rate are the live servers using? What tick rate are test servers using? Could you please give some input on how the recoil works in this game and if it is supposed to follow any set patterns or is it random? Here is a short clip showing a rather random behavior.

I can't speak to the server tick rates at the moment as we are still working to optimise and improve them. Recoil doesn't follow a pattern, and it is not fully random either. The way it is set up is meant to reward those with quicker reaction times.